Monday, April 27, 2009

"No one can hold you down. If you really want it Just steal your destiny. Right from the hands of fate Reach for the cup of life."

Do you really want it?? Awww Ricky Martin. Remember him? No, I haven't completely lost my mind. That song Cup of Life--well I thought of it today when Andy sent me flowers. Why did I think of it? Well because the card said "These are for your cup of life." You see, that is what Andy calls my mercury glass vase: my cup of life. He's forever asking me what I'm going to put in it, so finally I told him that if someone ever sent me flowers, I'd have something to put in the vase. Well guess what came today:

Nope, I'm not at all spoiled. And here's the whole picture. This is the fireplace in the kitchen--I think on the floor plan, the builder called this little area the hearth room or something like that. Anyway, I just wanted to point out my mad design on a dime skills here. The clock is from Target and the pictures are also from the T although I bought them cheaper at a thrift store. I liked the Paris theme since Drew and I were married there--Paris, Las Vegas that is. The candle sticks are also from a thrift store. The red candles were Christmas clearance at Kohl's. The iron welcome mat is a reproduction from a little shop in Occoquan, but I thought it was too pretty to step on so I put it on the mantle. Finally, the aforementioned mercury glass was on clearance from Pottery Barn. Do my penny pinching skills astound or what?

Sunday, April 26, 2009

I've got a lot of pictures for you today. The one up above there? Yep, that's our Chase in a jacket, scarf and hat on an 80 degree day. He's reenacting his most favorite Imagination Movers episode. In that particular show, the air conditioner won't turn off in the warehouse, so the movers are really cold & have to put on lots of warm clothes. Noodle likes to pretend it's cold in his imaginary warehouse too, so he's constantly asking to put on more warm clothes. Doesn't matter if it's hot enough to melt the cheese right off of his grinning face: the kid still wants his warm clothes. But don't worry about him getting heat stroke or anything. It only takes about 10 minutes of crafty distraction techniques to get him out of his ensemble. Although the effort required for that particular mental and physical exertion is typically enough to give me hot flashes.

Next, we have pictures from Allie's birthday. First we played a little ball.

Then we bounced a bit.

Wouldn't be a party without a giant parachute, would it?

All that exercise made us very hungry.

Finally, we have a picture of Amaya . She's just tutu cute right? (Sorry couldn't help myself)

And here are my darlings attacking their Mama. This is my cue to put away the camera--the children have had enough of the paparazzi.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Our little sugar bean has been keeping us on our toes at meal times. She gets very hyper upon first spying edible items and thus begins her feeding frenzy. She'll start kicking her feet and bouncing up and down in her chair with so much force that she looks like she's sitting in the last car of a roller coaster. Her excitement is so adorable that you can't help but smile and wonder how such a darling being came to exist.

But don't ponder the miracle too long. If you lose focus for even a second and fail to provide the little imp with a constant supply of food, her mood quickly changes. She shifts all of the energy that had been previously used for happy bouncing into fist clenching, face scrunching fury. There is no downtime between the two emotions either. As she is popping the last provided morsel of food into her mouth her eyes are scanning the table for its replacement. If she can't locate the much desired crumb, she'll begin her howling before she's even finished swallowing the food that is already in her mouth. Trying to adjust to her vacillation between ecstasy and rage makes your head spin. Perhaps we're on a roller coaster after all.

Friday, April 17, 2009

You want a new post. You want new pictures. I'm a slacker. You don't know how I can be so cruel and heartless. I should be ashamed. I know. I'm working on it. Maybe tomorrow.

In the meantime, you can enjoy these random pictures from my iPhone. One other thing, please try to think happy, forgiving thoughts rather than prank calling Laura until she provides more interesting reading material thoughts.

Monday, April 13, 2009

I am ashamed to admit to my gluttonous consumption of obscene amounts of cakes, cookies and candy this weekend. However, I must own up to my sins as my blog post today reflects the effects of my sugar slump on my brain's ability to allow proper conductivity at the site of my neural synapses. Roughly translated: my ability to form complete, coherent sentences is lacking today. No need to feign disappointment: I know you're only here for the pictures anyway. Everyone wins today.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Aside from that one major illness at Hanukkah/Christmas, my offspring have been fairly healthy this year. Before you tell me to knock on wood, let me just tell you: it's too late. Amaya is sick. She started getting snotty and congested last Thursday. Perhaps you remember my post about it? Andy took her to the doctor Friday and was told it was just a cold. But, almost a full week later, the girl still didn't seem to be getting any better. In fact, she was becoming cranky and even more needy. I am not exaggerating even a little when I say that she shrieked until her face turned bright red and her eyes popped out if I tried to sit her down the floor right next to me instead of on my lap. Have you ever tried to balance a 20lb squiggling weight in the crook of your dominate arm while using your free, but drastically less adept hand to empty and then reload the dishwasher? Let's just say that it was not a fun time to be the mama.

Then yesterday, I woke up with a sore throat, and suddenly a bunch of bells and lights started going off in my head. I just knew that Amaya had gotten strep, and the pediatrician confirmed my diagnosis. A quick look at the calender shows that this illness comes right before Passover Seder and Easter Sunday. Do you think she planned it that way?

Since she was still contagious last night, Amaya and I had to miss the Easter egg hunt at Allie's house. This totally bummed me out, but what could I do? I had already possibly exposed the entire group with the sugar cookies I made for the kids to decorate, so it didn't really seem very nice of me to take the little infected infant over there to breathe on them all, too. So that meant that Chase and Daddy went without us, and from the looks of the pictures it would seem that they didn't even notice our absence. Bah Bunnybug.

Here is Chase showing zero concern over the fact that he may have just ingested a strep laced sugar cookie. I would like it known that I provided full disclosure of the possible contamination, so any sickness attributed to consumption of said cookies is in no way my fault. Any questions regarding this matter can be directed to my personal assistant. Good luck reaching her--I've heard it's difficult getting imaginary people on the line.

I, according to the CVS Minute Clinic, do not have strep. I do have a sore throat, occasional fever and swollen lymph nodes on top of the normal runny nose, itchy eyes, headache and cough of allergies. But none of this--not my aches, not my daughter's germ infested body, nothing short of a plague will keep me from eating my weight in Matzo Brittle tomorrow night. So Gran, I hope you've made plenty.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Remember last year when I declared my desire to own those adorable monkey slippers? Well obviously, I got them. Apparently, my family seems to think that I whine when I don't get my way, so Jenn decided to save everyone the pain of listening to me by getting me the cute foot attire for Hanukkah. Don't they look great on my chubby feet?

And boy are they comfy. I wear them pretty much all day around the house, outside to get the mail, sometimes even when I'm driving if I don't plan to get out of the car but let's not tell anyone about that because I think it's probably illegal. Since I am obviously happy with the slippers, why the title of my post? Well, I'm not the only one that loves my slippers. Chase adores them too. He even named them Ew and Aw. Except he doesn't want to wear them, he wants to talk to them. And he expects them to talk back--all day long. Now who do you think gets to provide the voice for these two little sock monkeys? That's right, mama does. So instead of relaxing with my feet propped up in my chair, I have to repeat the same mindless conversation with Chase over and over and over and over. If I try to ignore his requests that "Monkeys talk me", Chase starts grabbing my toes and twisting until I begrudgingly wiggle my foot and ask him "How are you today Chase?" in my best monkeyish voice. I guess I could just stop wearing them, but then instead of seeing their cute little button eyes, I'd have to look at my ugly feet. Not sure which option is the greater torture at this point.